Economic woes hit state's women particularly hard

STOCKTON - The slumping economy of the past half-decade and the accompanying cuts to social services have hit California's women especially hard, according to a study released Wednesday.

Zachary K. Johnson

STOCKTON - The slumping economy of the past half-decade and the accompanying cuts to social services have hit California's women especially hard, according to a study released Wednesday.

And women fared worse than men in the shaky recovery that followed, according to "Falling Behind: The Impact of the Great Recession and the Budget Crisis on California's Women and Their Families."

The economic downturn didn't just soften the labor market; it also contributed to state budget cuts to services that low-income families rely upon, especially those with only one parent, said Jean Ross, executive director of the California Budget Project, which released the report with the Women's Foundation of California.

"Single mothers have lost more jobs than anybody else ... at the same time the safety net has been shredded," she said.

There's no second paycheck to fall back on when a single mother loses her job, Ross said. And the study showed that unmarried mothers who still had jobs lost earnings because they worked, on average, fewer hours every week. The two-hour decline, from 38.6 hours a week to 36.6 hours, is the steepest decline in two decades.

As the state began to recover somewhat, the loss of jobs began to subside, but not for women. From November 2010 to November 2011, the percentage of working-age men in the work force held steady, while the percentage of working-age women declined by a little more than a percentage point, according to the report. And while other areas of the labor market have seen gains, there have been job losses in schools and governments, where women make up a majority of the work force.

Ross said that all the findings in the report are particularly true in a region like Stockton, where unemployment has been higher and the housing crisis hit harder than elsewhere in the state. It's an area where the population relies more heavily on social services, too, she said.

And in San Joaquin County in recent years, cuts from the state have hit services that aid people who lost their jobs and reduced funding to services that would help them find new work, said Michael Miller, deputy director of the county Human Services Agency.

"It does have a (negative) effect on the family," he said.

The state's welfare-to-work program, known as CalWORKs, is used by 16,606 families in the county. That includes about 30,000 children; most of the roughly 8,000 adults in CalWORKS are women, according to county figures.

In this year's county budget for various CalWORKs programs, funding from the state for employment fell from about $15 million to $13 million, while money for child care fell from $10 million to $9 million, Miller said.

The governor's proposed budget for next year would cut funding for child care even more.

Charterhouse Center for Families contracts with the county to provide some services provided through CalWORKs. Some of the women served by the nonprofit agency will be driven out of the work force if the proposed cuts go through, Director Mikey Kamienski said.

"If you can't afford a baby sitter, you can't go to work," she said. "That's just a fact of life, and there are only so many grandmothers around."